On Tuesday 1 July, from 7 pm, Alice Yard will host an informal evening to welcome Ajamu and introduce him to members of the local arts and LGBTI communities. This will include a digital installation of some of the artist’s recent work, and a short introduction to his activities in Trinidad.

All are invited.

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About Ajamu:

Ajamu is an acclaimed London-based artist, archive curator, and sex activist, known for his fine art portraits and unapologetic imagery of black male sexuality and same-sex desire. He works in large-format black-and-white analogue photography and traditional 19th-century printing processes.

His work has been exhibited in various galleries, museums, and alternative spaces in the UK, Europe, and the United States. His most recent exhibition, Fierce (2013), ran at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London, and included 25 platinum prints of young Black LGBTQ “movers and shakers” and a 20-minute short film with a selection of the sitters.

Ajamu is co-founder of the award-winning organisation rukus! Federation and the rukus! Black LGBTQ Arts and cultural archive. He is one of the UK’s leading specialists on Black Queer heritage.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Courtney J. Martin is an art historian and curator based at Brown University. In June 2014 she will participate in a short curatorial residency at Alice Yard, exploring developments in Trinidad’s art scene. On Tuesday 17 June, at 7 pm, she will give an informal talk about her curatorial practice.

Prior to Brown, she was an assistant professor in the History of Art department at Vanderbilt University (2010-2013); Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the University of California at Berkeley (2009-2010); a fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2008-2009); and a Henry Moore Institute Research Fellow (2007). She received a doctorate from Yale University in 2009. She also worked in the media, arts, and culture unit of the Ford Foundation in New York.

Her writing has appeared in Art Asia Pacific, Artforum.com, Art Papers, Contemporary, Flashart, Frieze, the Getty Research Journal, and NKA. In 2014, she is working on a manuscript about British art and politics after 1968, co-curating an exhibition of post-minimalist art in Denmark, and co-editing a volume of essays on the critic/curator Lawrence Alloway.

.Alice Yard is the backyard space of the house at 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain.

This was once the house of Sean Leonard’s great-grandmother. Four generations of children played and imagined in this yard, and now we continue this tradition. Alice Yard is a space for creative experiment, collaboration, and improvisation.

Alice Yard is administered and curated by architect Sean Leonard, artist Christopher Cozier, and writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin, with the help of a growing network of creative collaborators. Read more about us here. Alice Yard is a non-profit organisation incorporated under the laws of Trinidad and Tobago.

Since 2008, Alice Yard has run a residency programme hosting artists, curators, and other creative practitioners. Find out more here.